Thursday, March 1, 2007

Henry Kaiser's comments about this insane dada avant-pop orchestra are probably the best way to preface any discussion of their work:

"Mr. Senba seems to be one of the most successful studio drummers in Tokyo. I sure hope that he is very successful, as I'm sure that the music copyist bills alone of the Haniwa Allstars would bankrupt most small businesses. There are about one hundred people in this band. All on stage at once. 5 or six drummers. A big horn section. A huge section of traditional Japanese instrumentalists. A dozen vocalists. All dressed in pajamas and nurses uniforms. Many of the members are big pop and/or jazz stars in Japan. Senba is the writer-arranger-conductor-madman behind this band. I suppose that the only person that you might compare Senba to in America, in terms of scale of ambition, is Frank Zappa. (Although Senba's music has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Zappa or his musical interests.) Senba is spectacularly successful with his truly insane, giant, all style-encompassing musical vision. It's too bad you will never ever see this release in any American record shop. Too bad that we are so culture-bound over here."

What Henry's leaving out here is any mention of just how utterly brain warping all of this sounds. Senba and his All Stars are lunacy of herculean proportions and a screaming peak of the Japanese pop avant garde. I know of one collector of experimental music who's arguably amongst the world's biggest and who considers them to be his all time favorite band! Of these two, "Haniwa" sits just a smidge higher for me insofar as the studio processing (worthy of Wha Ha Ha) lacquered on top of this already sublime nuttiness pushes things to a nearly supernatural threshold of weirdness, but they're both capable of causing slackjawed amazement and drooling upon initial exposure...

Thanks for the KIYOHIKO SENBA albums. I was really looking forward to these but unfortunately the haniwa lp archive is corrupt. any body else having this same problem?Please couls you repost the KIYOHIKO SENBA.zip file.thanksP.A.U.

The reason why some people have problems unzipping the Haniwa file is because there is a space behind the directory "kiyohiko senba " inside the zipfile. If one removes this space using ones unzip tool it unzips fine. I guess it depends on the unzip tool one uses whether this causes problems or not.

ok, i'm also having problems with these zip files. could somebody explain more precisely what to do with them (they won't open displaying a 'corrupt file message')tried some 100 times. it's a major bugger...

Psychic TV (sometimes spelt Psychick TV) or PTV, is primarily an electronic music group that occasionally forays into psychedelic, punk and ...

VISITORS

MY WANTS LIST

BLISS 91 comp.tape

NOTRE DAME tapes

TANT QU’IL Y AURA DU TANGO tape

DISCO TOTEM

HOW TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE? comp.tape

PRIVATE SOUNDS comp. tape

QFVDLO ? n° 8 comp. tape

PASSIONS ORGANIQUES comp. tapes

ATTENTION A MARIANNE T. comp. tape

BLOC OPERATOIRE compilation tape

NOMUZIC-tapes(any)

MITCH RUSHTON-tapes(any)

PENGA-tapes (any)

DARK ENIGMA-CLAUSTROPHOBIA tape

DITTO-TEXAS ELECTRIC tape

STEVE HARTWELL-anything

DINO DIMURO-anything

VIKTIMIZED KARCASS-anything

RANCID POULTRY-anything

CARL HOWARD-anything

L.G. MAIR-anything

KEN CLINGER-tapes(any)

LARRY MONDELLO BAND-tapes(any)

CHUCK VAN ZYL-CALLISTO,any tapes

ICEPLANTS tapes (any)

Northampton Under Glass compilation tape

Northumbrian compilation tape

Funeral Danceparty tapes

Bunny Lakers LP(complete)+++

As for the time being i'm searching for resource material i would appreciate any scans or photocopies of late 70's/early 80s fanzines on experimental/industrial/punk/DIY stuff.Especially i would appreciate photocopied issues of:AURA,FACE OUT,FOOLS MATE(******) NEWSTYLE(esp.Nr 10)ATEM magazine,AUDION magazine,Grohinga Well(or something like that,Belgian magazine).If you can provide any of this stuff please contact me.